OTTAWA — Around the time the RCMP accused naval officer Jeffrey Paul Delisle of starting to hand over secret intelligence to another country, he did a different sort of spying, according to a former Ottawa-area neighbour: hiding behind bushes at his east-end Ottawa condo complex to see if his wife was cheating.

Sub-Lt. Delisle, 40, is charged under the Security of Information Act with breach of trust and communicating information to a foreign entity without lawful authority. None of the charges has been proven in court.

Sheila Powell, a former neighbour of Delisle and his wife, Jennifer — the couple is now divorced — said she saw Delisle on at least one occasion lurking behind a hedge to see what his wife was doing at the home of another man who lived in the neighbourhood. She didn’t say anything to Delisle, but after her walk called another neighbour about what she had observed.

“We knew what he was doing. It was quite obvious,” said Powell of that moment near the end of 2007.

It was in the summer of that same year the Mounties now allege Delisle first supplied information to a foreign government. Powell’s recollections this week suggest a naval officer grappling with serious family stress at the time of the alleged crimes.

According to Powell, the Delisles’ marital problems were well-known within the tight-knit complex just west of Orleans, an Ottawa suburb. Powell said she used to visit the Delisles’ home for coffee.

The Delisles married in Nova Scotia in 1997. The couple left the Maritimes in 2006 for Ottawa. But by April 26, 2008 Delisle and Jennifer had separated, according to court documents. They sold their condo and he moved to Kingston, Ont. where he attended the Royal Military College.

Delisle was given custody of the three youngest of the couple’s four children. The eldest daughter, 19, stayed in Ottawa. The couple divorced in 2010 according to court documents. Detailed reasons for the divorce were not provided other than it was a result of “certain differences.”

Delisle and the three children moved back to Nova Scotia in 2010 after his time in Kingston.

According to the divorce records Delisle continued to “solely” support the children and assumed the couple’s debt, including three credit cards and a consolidated loan. Court documents also show he had declared bankruptcy previously, in 1998.

A number of residents of the condo complex said it was an affair that finally ended the marriage, and added Jennifer had a child with another man while the two were still married.

Contacted by Postmedia News, Jennifer, 37, declined to talk about what led to the divorce.

But asked about the RCMP espionage allegations, she said: “Did I know what was going on? No. Of course, not.”

Powell and other former neighbours, such as Debbie Cameron, described Delisle as a hard working man who cared for his family but was stressed about money and the problems with his marriage.

“He seemed pretty stressed at the time,” Cameron said.

Cameron said when the couple moved into unit 12 she befriended them.

She described Jennifer as a “social butterfly” and Delisle as the opposite.

She said it was clear from the beginning money was tight and the couple didn’t have a car to get around.

“I was a stay-at-home mom at the time so I used to drive Jen to get groceries and stuff like that,” said Cameron. “Financially, they didn’t have much. They were scrounging to get by.”

“He wasn’t a bad person. He provided for his family and went to work every day. He did his best,” she said.

Cameron said she began distancing herself from the couple when rumours of the marital problems began swirling around the complex.

“I just kind of stayed away. I just feel bad for the children,” Cameron said.

Friends said Jennifer returned to Ottawa this past weekend from Nova Scotia with the three children who had been living with Jeffrey Delisle prior to his arrest.

Powell, who sat on the condo board at the time, said the charges Delisle faces don’t ring true to the man she remembers.

“Him and I got along great,” she said. “I don’t understand him doing that. He loved the military so much. He didn’t have that shady kind of character.”

She also said Jennifer would confide in her about their money problems.

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